People say it all the time: if I had a certain amount of money, I’d give a certain amount of it away. The reality is they won’t. Not because they’re lying, but because it doesn’t work that way. You are who you are right now, and what you do with your money right now is what you’ll do with more of it. More money doesn’t make your character better. It just reveals who you actually are, and a lot faster.
The widow’s two mites
There’s a passage in the Gospels about a widow who put two mites into the treasury. It was all she had, and she gave it trusting in God. I’m not telling anybody to go give away their last two pennies. That isn’t the point. The point is that her generosity wasn’t waiting on her circumstances. Your level of generosity now is going to match your level of generosity if you had more, and having more simply reveals a lot quicker who you really are inside.
Gratitude comes first
If generosity doesn’t come from money, I think it comes from gratitude. The more grateful we are for the things we have, for what has been given to us and for the people around us, the more generous we tend to become. Without gratitude, you’re not going to be generous.
Some people will say nothing was given to them; they worked for everything they have. If someone said that to me, I would simply tell him he’s a fool. No man is an island. The very economy we work in was given to us. The safety we have on our streets was given to us. We don’t build businesses alone, and we don’t have families alone. The man who is simply alone is a very lonely man. I built a company, for sure, and God gave me grace for sure. But it wasn’t me alone. It was a multitude of people working together for a common good.
It starts with order
None of this means giving away what your family needs. Everything I think about this is predicated on a rightly ordered life. For me as a father, that order is God, my own soul, the souls of my wife and children, and then providing for them. If I don’t have enough food to feed my family, I should not be giving our food to other people. And within the hours that are appropriate for me to work at my age, I think a man should do the absolute best he can to earn as much as he can with the skills he has, and keep developing those skills. I’m not against making money. The trouble starts when the pursuit of more breaks that order.
Where most of us get into trouble is confusing needs and wants. I love good coffee. I don’t need coffee at all, and I certainly don’t need the most expensive coffee. I choose it because I want it. When we tell ourselves every want is a need, our expenses can greatly exceed our income, and that’s why people get into debt in the first place. It’s also why Dave Ramsey’s method works so well for people getting out of debt: you write down what you really need, and the rest becomes a choice. Generosity lives in that space of choices, and it’s one of the things that keeps us from avarice. If we never take actionable steps that cost us something, we won’t change.
Teach it early
That’s why I think the best time to learn generosity is as a child. We teach our children to say thank you when they’re given something. What is thank you but acknowledging a gift and passing it on? It’s merely words, though. Shouldn’t we have actions that back our words as well? If I’ve been given something, I need to be grateful for it, and the way I express that gratefulness is by passing some of it on. When children start giving early, before they have much, they learn that they are needed to give. I believe if more of society did this, we wouldn’t need nearly as many of the social programs we have in this country.
Be thoughtful about it, too. Know what good you’re trying to accomplish and be selective. Find causes you care about, ideally ones where you personally know who you’re giving to, and support those rather than giving money away willy-nilly. But give. It is more blessed to give than to receive, and I don’t think that becomes true only after you’ve made enough.